The 2018 Rising Stars of the Profession: Ralph Whalen

Ralph Whalen says one of the tricks of the trade he embraces is depending on habit. "The habituation of everything from my morning routine to daily reports I send out has instilled a practice of looking for repeatable process steps in everything I do," he says. "Even in chaotic and uncertain project environments, this practice has allowed me to focus on the steps towards my goal rather than the sometimes-overwhelming entirety of that goal."

This practice is working for Walen, who spearheads Divurgent's strategic internal and external initiatives around business development, solution creation and analytics in healthcare. His focus rests on his clients' ability to reach regulatory compliance/reimbursement; standardize evidence-based care; deploy technology implementations and capture performance; and promote quality patient care.

He says he's excited to watch the healthcare industry continue to evolve. "I think we're approaching an age where predictive analytics will surpass human accuracy and I'm fascinated to see how the industry will handle both the technological and human factors behind diagnostics," he says. "I hope to have the opportunity to play a role in the conversations as organizations work through the next health care revolution."

Whalen says Divurgent has given him the opportunity to develop and execute an entirely new methodology. "The sense of accomplishment from watching successful implementations of these novel approaches has been tremendous," Whalen says. "In particular, I was proud to develop and guide a successful implementation of our machine learning driven database quality assessment and to see the way in which it elevated us in the eyes of our client."